Tuesday, 13 March 2012

Alien Invaders 1 - Rockhead: The Living Mountain by Max Silver

C took the Book People catalogue to bed last week to have a look, as he tends to when it arrives. He was instantly enamoured of the Alien Invasion set of five books by Max Silver (if that's his real name). He had noticed that it said "for fans of Beast Quest" in the description. There has been a great deal of excitement since they were dispatched, and today they finally arrived.

I was less excited. Truth be told, I don't want anything else toppling Beast Quest from its current position on the pedestal. I like Beast Quest. It's all action and excitement, and characters battling forces of nature and evil wizards and the like. Sometimes I allow C to have two chapters, just so that I can see what happens next, because the cliff-hangers are genuinely interesting.

Alien Invaders, however, is all high-tech equipment, lasers and people posturing in shiny space suits. There are lots of hand-held communication devices, where in Beast Quest there are magic shields and a map where the landscape is 3-D and has real rain and snow etc. In Beast Quest they have either normal names like Tom or obviously magical names like Malvel the Dark Wizard. What's not to like? So far, the characters in Alien Invaders are called G1 and Kaos. What sort of a name is G1? That's not a name! And Kaos is an abomination against spelling.

I am trying to pretend that I am excited about how Alien Invaders will turn out, as I don't want to rain on C's parade. However, it has nicked the idea of a boy saving humanity from Beast Quest, and it has unashamedly nicked all of the aliens from Ben 10. As the mother of a 6 year old boy, it is obvious to me that the charcter of Rockhead is based on Diamondhead. Mr "Silver" needs to get some of his own ideas.

I am hoping to encourage C to read these on his own; but he is so far unconvinced.

About Me

I once read that you should blog about things that interest you. Anyone who has ever been to my house will testify that I LOVE books, particularly children's books. I am mum to three children, and a teacher of literacy in a comprehensive school, so, luckily for me, I have ample opportunity to read children's books! On this blog I plan to share my views on all of those wonderful books out there written for children. @mreaderofbooks on Twitter.